Jon,

It's good to hear you can repeat the problem reliably.

The way it's supposed to work for LAN connections is that the SlingPlayer simply sends out a broadcast on the local net and waits for Slingboxes to answer with their local IP address, which is then used to communicate with it directly. UPnP isn't involved in this as far as I know, nor are either of the settings for Slingbox ID or Direct Connect--they're only involved in WAN connections.

 If you try to connect to a Slingbox that was saved in your preferences, but hasn't responded to the LAN broadcast, then we assume it's a remote (WAN) connection, and *then* we use the Slingbox ID or Direct Connect.

It sounds like in your case, the SlingPlayer may not be getting the response(s) from your Slingbox(es), so it's using the *public* IP in the Direct Connect field which may be a much slower route, hence the lower quality AV.  You note that when you put your LAN IP into the Direct Connect field, it works.  Aha.

However it doesn't explain why your WAN connections aren't equally low-quality, so I will have to mull this over some more (I'll have to mull, as we can't reproduce your problem here in Muppet Labs).

 -- st3veh

Hi Steve

 I am also having problems with the direct connection method... It worked fine in the Mac Beta, but now when I try the direct connection, it says "starting stream" and then it never shows a picture. I am using a dyndns setup which always worked under the beta.

 There are no problems using the Finder ID, this only happens on both my local mac mini and my macbook when using the direct connection. I have verified my port settings, etc.

Thanks for any assist you might have.

Hi NA9D

 Streaming remotely does work using the Finder ID.. I cannot seem to get a connection using the Direct Connection. Both worked fine in the Beta version, but I cannot get any of my computers to connect using Direct Connection. No settings have been changed on the router, but it doesn't ever connect.